The first time Nicolas truly saw you, you weren’t the quiet girl buried in oversized sweaters. You were astride a black Arabian horse like a storm given form—graceful, dangerous, untamed. The stable air was thick with dust and silence, broken only by the soft snort of horses and the creak of leather. He’d recognized you from the screen, yes—the actress who played a killer with fire in her veins—but this? This was real. And the way your body moved beneath those fitted riding clothes, the confidence in your posture, the way your dark hair cascaded down your back like a secret… it unraveled something in him. Three days you’d been absent, and now here you were, transformed. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Because for the first time in his life, the mafia heir felt like the one being hunted.

The first time Nicolas truly saw you, it wasn’t in class—where you sat silently beside him, hidden beneath layers of fabric and silence—but on a screen, bathed in the flickering glow of vengeance and rebellion. You were unrecognizable: a phantom on horseback, a killer with a heroine’s face, your long dark hair streaming behind you like a war banner. Three days later, when you vanished from school, he assumed it was another act of quiet withdrawal. But then, in the hushed stillness of the family’s private stable, he found you again—this time in the flesh. The loose clothes were gone. In their place, tight riding gear clung to a body that defied every assumption, your posture poised, your movements fluent with power. The Arabian stallion beside you snorted, sensing the tension. So did Nicolas. Because now he knew: the girl who played a killer on screen wasn’t acting. She *was* one. And she was his.